_Some Features of the Situation_
Every morning Tom "prowled," as he put it, all around the camp, "just to
see how things are," he said.
Two mornings after the talk reported in the last chapter Tom found, out
under the bluff, a big bag of rye meal or rather of rye coarsely ground
for whiskey making purposes. He dragged it over the hard snow to camp
and opened it. In its mouth he found a piece of paper and written upon
it in rude letters was the following:
U Pade 2 Mutch
Fer the Mele. Heares
A nother bag to Mak it
SKWAR. Dont gim
me Awa.
BILL JONES.
Tom called all the boys into conference before deciding what to do with
this present. He said to them:
"Bill's ideas of morality are somewhat confused. In his eagerness to
render me some return for my act in letting him go back to his 'little
gal' on parole, he wanted to give me the meal I brought to camp the
other morning. It never occurred to him that as the meal didn't belong
to him, he had no right to give it to me, and all I could say to him was
utterly futile as an effort to make him take a moral or rational view of
the case. Now I am seriously afraid our friend Bill stole this rye meal.
That would perfectly fit in with his ideas of morality, gratitude and
all that sort of thing. Still we don't know that he did steal it. After
all I did pay him a double price for the meal we got, and possibly he
has applied part of the surplus payment to the purchase of this
additional supply from his criminal friends the distillers. After all I
have no means of knowing that he ever paid the original owners of that
first meal any part of the money that I gave him for it. He couldn't see
at the time why he shouldn't steal it for me, and so he may have stolen
this."
"Well," said the Doctor, "you honestly paid him for the former supply of
meal, insisting that you wouldn't take it at all unless you paid for
it. He understands that perfectly. He has a sufficient sense of honesty
now to bring you an additional bag on the ground that you paid an
excessive price for the former supply and that he wants to make it
'skwar.' I don't see how we can go behind that, especially as we cannot
possibly return the meal either to him or to its owners if he stole it.
Our only option is to eat the stuff or take it back out there to the
foot of the bluff and leave it there to rot."
After some further discussion it was decided to eat the rye meal as
practically the only thing that could be done with it.
One week later another bag of meal--corn meal this time--was found out
under the bluff, but with it came no explanation of any kind. Thus the
bread supply in Camp Venture was made secure for a time at least, and
for a meat supply the guns did all that was necessary--especially Tom's
gun, for Tom spent many of his hours wandering over the mountains in
search of game, and Tom rarely sought game in vain.
It was coming on to be March now, and the weather had greatly moderated.
The snow was melting off the mountains and the spring rains were falling
freely.
"Our meal will run out before long," said the Doctor one night, "but
the time is near at hand when we can send a boy down the mountain to
bring up a pack mule with some supplies."
"Indeed you can't," said Tom.
"But why not?" asked the Doctor.
"Simply because there are some mountain torrents in the way, that no
human being could pass, even if he had one of your big steamships to
help him in the crossing."
"But I saw no mountain torrents on our way up," said the Doctor.
"Certainly not," answered Tom, "for they weren't mountain torrents then,
but the dry beds of streams. But now it is different. It would be as
impossible now for us to 'git down out'n the mountings' as to fly to the
moon--unless we went down over the cliffs there, following the chute.
And of course we couldn't bring a pack mule up that way. No, we've got
to stick it out and live on what we can get till our work is done, and
then--as the spring is coming on and the way is blocked by the torrents
of which I spoke,--we've got to make our way over the cliffs down there
by the chute, for we simply cannot get down the mountain by the way we
came."
"How do you know this, Tom?" asked Harry.
"Why, I've tried it. You see any road down the mountain that furnishes
an easy way is sure to be crossed by creeks that are dry in the summer
and fall, but raging whirlpools when spring melts the snow and sends
millions of gallons of water every minute down the steep inclines. I
count myself a strong swimmer. But I could no more swim across one of
those sluiceways than I could climb up a sunbeam to the rainbow. I tell
you we can get nothing from down below now, and I tell you that we can't
ourselves go down the mountain by the way by which we came up, for two
or three months to come."
"What are we to do, then, Tom?" asked the Doctor.
"Well, first, we're to feed ourselves as best we can till we've finished
our work; and then we're to go down the mountain on its steep side along
the chute. That will involve a great deal of toil and some danger. We
shall have to let ourselves down over cliffs by hanging on to bushes,
with the certainty that if the bushes give way we shall be dashed to
pieces on the rocks below. But that's the only way we can get down the
mountain unless we are willing to wait for summer."
"Well, the question is not an immediately pressing one," said Jack.
"We've got a lot of work ahead of us yet, and we've got plenty of game
and plenty of bread stuffs in camp."
"Plenty of game, yes," said the Doctor. "But as for bread stuffs, I
don't think we have more than a peck or so left."
The next morning Tom, in his "prowlings" found two big bags of corn and
rye meal lying there under the bluff. "It's a case of bread cast upon
the waters returning to us after many days," said Tom.